Suffering From Scottishness (Kevin P Gilday)

I really wanted to love this. At its heart lies a beautiful message, a vision of a Scotland at peace with itself, where we can look past our differences and work together to make life here better. But, while there is much to admire here (some powerful poetry and spoken word, funny songs, excellent gags) it doesn’t all hang together quite right. There’s just too much going on. It’s already balancing humour with the complexities of modern politics, while both celebrating traditional aspects of Scottish culture and transcending the tartan shortbread-tin clichés. And it’s doing all this through the device of a faux-focus-group. Adding in a personal story, of our protagonist’s strained relationship with his father, is just too much.